Tuesday, July 06, 2004

WCS Niceties

More West Coast Swing lessons last night. The beginning level class had a lot of people who weren't actually complete beginners, so the teacher (whom I will probably start referring to as "the other Richard," or "R2") spent a lot of time giving us refinements to the basic steps. It made me feel somewhat less confident in my general west-coasting, but in the long run it will probably be good. I also thought it was interesting how he made a point of focusing on the lag time between a leading a move and following it, and on how the follower should actually be conscious of a distinct moment of choice for every move. I tend to think of things as being more simultaneous in the other dances I do, even though I know there are lots of leading cues that come before a move actually starts. So I suppose it's kind of a subtle difference, really.

The intermediate level class was unusual in that R2 didn't really teach any new moves, but focused on musicality. New moves might have been more useful to me personally, but it was fun and I still got some handy tricks from it. We did a couple nice breaks, and learned some easy ways to line ourselves up with the 1's of the music, even with a lot of six-count steps throwing us off. I really appreciated that, since it let me take more control of my phrasing than I had been able to before. (I'm a stickler for phrasing.)

Oh, and we also spent a few minutes trying to learn a basic body roll. That was rather more disastrous, at least as far as I was concerned.